Yellowstone (WY, MT, ID)

Park Number: 1/59

First Visited: Undocumented

When I set the goal of visiting all the U.S. national parks I already had Yellowstone thoroughly covered; growing up in Montana I frequented the park often. Despite this, it wasn't until I took a college course taught by Yellowstone National Park Historian Lee Whittlesey that I developed a profound respect for the area. I return often and still get giddy each time I pass under the Roosevelt Arch.

I relish the fact that Yellowstone was the first national park on the entire planet (something giving me great pride as I consider this my hometown park). Therefore, setting such a precedence, this park comes with a lot of unique history. I specifically appreciate Yellowstone's chronicles of conservation and wildlife protection, as exemplified in 1894 with the story of George Bird Grinnell using media coverage in Forest and Stream Magazine to bring wildlife poaching problems to national attention. This then led to the "Act to Protect the Birds and Animals in Yellowstone National Park," an act that initiated and inspired a long list of further laws that now protect wildlife throughout the country. For example, it's forbidden to remove biomass from the parks.

Wildlife in the park is replete; I never leave a visit without a satisfying sighting, whether it be wolves lounging after a feast, moose grazing in a valley, or grizzlies meandering by a water source. But bison stand resolute in my mind when considering Yellowstone because these animals act as a reminder to a historical past of malfeasance and poor stewardship in the West. They now stand as a symbolic hope to our reexamined understanding and commitment to conservation.

Unique park experiences generally coincide with fortunate timing. For example, every spring Yellowstone closes its roads for maintenance for a couple of weeks, leaving the roadways open only to cyclists and pedestrians. Therefore, last April my cousin and I took advantage of this by cycling from Mammoth to Norris and back again. We saw maybe ten other people the whole time.

I return to Yellowstone nearly once a month, whether enjoying my own adventures or guiding first-time friends through the area. It never gets old. This is because Yellowstone is an expansive park (only eight percent can be seen from the road system) with intricate backcountry trails weaving throughout geothermal hot spots, lodgepole pine forests, and gorgeous waterways. And the change of seasons can alter all of this into new experiences throughout the year. I love visiting in the winter because, with few other people around, you can have the more popular sites to yourself.

Yellowstone, of the fifty-nine national parks in the system, is my park. I'll be exploring it for the rest of my life.

Glacier (MT)

Park Number: 2/59

First Visited: Undocumented

There's a unique sense of pride, for me, that comes with this park as it's technically the only fully-fledged Montanan national park in the system (MT only claiming 3% of Yellowstone). This park also has, quite possibly, the most dramatic mountains in the United States. Thus far I've only seen comparable glacier-cut valleys in the Fiordlands of New Zealand.

When visiting Glacier, traversing the Going-to-the-Sun Highway is a must, hiking the ample trails is recommended (I'm keen to the eastern side, especially Lake Mary), and heading into Waterton Lakes National Park on the Canadian side is a nice added bonus if you've got the time (and a passport). Lastly, bring your bear spray—grizzlies are ample in this region (with an estimated 1,200 in the park).

Great Smoky Mountains (TN, NC)

Park Number: 3/59

First Visited: August 10, 2009

I first visited the Smokies as a matter of pragmatics: it's a drive-through park linking the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic, a winding corridor through Appalachia. Because of this gateway, and because of its central location amongst some of America's densest populations, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited park in the system (with over ten-million people a year, which is double the next most-visited park).

My second visit was one of intent, offering me multiple days of exploration and ample hours studying the replete ecosystem (I've been told the Smokies have more species of trees than all of Western Europe). This is all to say, though this park pales in comparison to the iconic monuments and peaks of the West, its biodiversity is second to none.

Grand Teton (WY)

Park Number: 4/59

First Visited: July 5, 2010

There is nothing quite like the Tetons. They are myth materialized. A caracature of creation. Certainly a throne to some lesser planetary gods.

This range is the result of tectonic rifting, meaning that the plates are currently pulling apart from each other (opposed to colliding or sliding together), causing one block to rise (the Tetons) and the other to sink (Jackson Hole). The Tetons are also the youngest range in the Rockies. And they feel young. Alive. Raw.

Even from a distance, say, when driving from West Yellowstone to Idaho Falls, it's hard to stay focused on the road because these majestic peaks are magnetic to your gaze. You can't look away. And why would you want to?

Rocky Mountain (CO)

Park Number: 5/59

First Visited: August 25, 2010

Rocky Mountain National Park, like a womb to the wilderness, generates primordial splendor that is instantly recognizable upon visiting. Animals abound, trees skyward—the land is a spiritual allowance gifted by paternal deities. Any trail is proof of such—whether road, hiking path, or waterway—as all lead through terrain sculpted by the divine grace of time and tectonic tinkering. Every season, each year, holds its own romance: winter unblemished, spring resurrected, summer explored, and fall…my favorite.

It’s in the fall that the leaves turn every gilded hue discernable in a fire and, like a burning, the mountainside flares up in the agony of a dying season. But don’t be fooled; life is abundant in this abated era. Black bears gorge in hyperphagia to prepare the babies brewing in their bellies. Massive bull elk clash heads and horns, violent and raw, as they bugle for reproductive rights—the rut, as it is called, always impending.

Great Sand Dunes (CO)

Park Number: 6/59

First Visited: September 23, 2010

You glisten, serpentine, under this desert-dome sky of sunshine artistry, thirty square miles of sand acting as Apollo's wind-carved canvas. And like any great creation, this masterpiece reflects its creator: hot, bright, illuminating. You can lose yourself out here—lose your mind at least—with granular grit clinging to your flesh, burrowing in your hair and weighing down your shoes. It's like another layer of skin, maybe a dead one, and maybe a reminder of what it means to be reduced by the elements. But unlike the Great Sand Dune sidewinders, you're not shedding this skin, only crawling back into it. A regression. A return to the primordial. You glisten gold. You become art yourself.

Yosemite (CA)

Park Number: 7/59

First Visited: October 8, 2010

What prose can possibly still elucidate Yosemite that hasn’t already come from the quills of John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Ansel Adams, and all other early defenders of this park. Yosemite is paramount in the national park experiment, probably being the most important park in the system, because it continually acts of the forbearer of congressional legislation, such as the 1864 Yosemite Grant signed by Abraham Lincoln, the mishaps with James Hutchings, the controversy over Hetch Hetchy. Yosemite sets precedence, plain and simple. And with California in perpetual drought, climate change on the rise, and air pollution abysmal, I predict that we will once again be looking to the Sierras as a guide to how future environmental problems are handled.

Death Valley (CA, NV)

Park Number: 8/59

First Visited: October 22, 2010

I'd told Troy, just days earlier, that I'd never gotten a flat tire before...funny how we were now staring directly at one. It was after a day of exploring the hottest place on the planet. After a day of driving around a 3.4 million acre park. We went because I wanted to show my little brother what the desert looks like turned inside out—the type of thing Dante tried to write into his hell—so we climbed the dry mud mountain washes, hiked marble-like canyons, and gazed across endless salt flats. But a flat tire? This was unexpected. And unprepared for.

After wrestling with the spare (of a car which wasn't mine), frying my flesh and boiling my brain to the mid-day inferno, I concluded a repair wasn't possible until the valley relented. We walked to a ranger station, got a lift to the nearest restaurant, and waited out the heat.

That's what national parks mean to me: unexpected adventures; but more importantly, meaningful time spent with the people you love.

Joshua Tree (CA)

Park Number: 9/59

First Visited: November 12, 2010

It's a confluence, two deserts colliding to form a landscape replete with oddity. The trees are the namesake, the centerpiece, but really only a welcoming biomass to the park's other wonders. I go for the rocks.

My favorite is to get lost in the Hall of Horrors, scrambling in and amongst the cracks, forgotten between boulders, and somehow always emerging to a summit of panoramic view. It's dangerous. I should have gotten hurt by now. But you forget about the threat, about falling, because this place turns you back into a child. Curiosity becomes your only concern.

Channel Islands (CA)

Park Number: 10/59

First Visited: November 19, 2010

We stripped our clothes, bolting down the coast, our bare feet flapping and slapping against reflective sand. Everything flapping. But what did we care? This island, our island, was free from the haunt of any judger's judgement or any gazer's gaze. We were alone with only the miniature foxes and island scrub jays.

It was hard to imagine such solitude while being on a landmass still visible from the Los Angeles area, but this was a place the frontier forgot: California as it would have looked pre-settlement. We breathed it in, let the salt water breeze soothe our skin, and hiked back in the dark. There was nothing to fear, not out here, human or otherwise.

Redwood (CA)

Park Number: 11/59

First Visited: December 20, 2010

These trees, true dendrite deities, form a direct line from heaven to earth, pulling manna from the sky and permitting sorcery in the soil. These are the redwoods, the tallest trees on the entire planet, the placeholder of any hippy's heart.

This national park has an odd and haunting history of preservation, with many conflicting groups vying for different uses of the land. Lumber, watershed, and erosion all became pressing issues. And because Congress couldn't act quick enough to answer the redwood's plight, the area is now a broken chain of state and national parks. Private land, being used for tourist attractions (giant replicas of Paul Bunyan, tunnels cut through trees), is dispersed throughout the mess. The result is a jarring experience, taking you from protected land to exploited land and back again, but once you bury yourself in an old-growth forest (such as the Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park) you begin to forget the world around you, your eyes only skyward.

Bryce Canyon (UT)

Park Number: 12/59

First Visited: January 21, 2011

My appendix was gone, taken not but a week earlier, but I was in Bryce nonetheless, wandering hoodoos and feeling the weight of a loneliness I wanted to forget. After all, the place is an amphitheater. It only amplifies what you bring to it: awe, wonder, bewilderment, desperation, longing, loss.

This was my first visit to a national park alone, my first lesson in that necessity to share an experience, because I wanted the world to see this with me: the sun rising over the distant ridge with the orange of eroded rock challenging the glow from below.

It was snow dusted then. I was slipping and sliding while navigating those trails of descent. And with each attempt not to fall, my side would split, my belly still stitched and missing an absent organ. It hurt like hell. But this is a place I'd tear myself open for.

Zion (UT)

Park Number: 13/59

First Visited: January 21, 2011

Zion is our temple of the American Southwest. Sheer cliffs act as the face of the cathedral while river-cut valleys carve out a place for us to praise. Angels Landing is the pulpit. Virgin waters, flowing from the north and east, our baptism. Other features include petrified sand dunes, slot canyons reminiscent of any major city's subway, and arches where the elements have gutted the mountainside. Zion—holiest of the holies—it's no surprise such a name was chosen. Nothing less would suffice.

Saguaro (AZ)

Park Number: 14/59

First Visited: February 19, 2011

After I’d made the decision to attempt visiting all the U.S. national parks, I found myself living in San Diego not too long after. Every weekend in the new city was then spent with anyone curious enough to accompany me to the surrounding natural wonders. This is how I ended up in Saguaro National Park with my four roommates after a spontaneous six-hour drive throughout the night.

Saguaro, a defining cactus of the Sonoran Desert, was once a threatened species that many thought was going to fade away like the dying American frontier the cactus once symbolized. This threat was mainly due to the increase human need of trees for local lime kilns and cattle grazing, an act which left the slow-developing plant trampled beneath hooves (a decade-old saguaro might only be two inches off the ground). Luckily, both local citizens and federal employees stepped forward to advocate for proper protection, resulting first as a national monument and then, sixty-one years later, as a fully-fledged national park. Because of this protection, visitors, like myself, can now marvel at the abundant expanse of unique cactus standing taller than ever and still representing our solemn wilderness of the Southwest.

Saguaro, unlike many other parks in the system, is easily accessible and often falls within the route of already-planned road trips (the park surrounds Tucson right along Interstate 10). Because of this I’ve been to the park myriad times and will continue going back whenever I’m in the area. Every visit has been with friends and family and every visit has been unique; I love bearing witness to a new visitor’s face when they first recognize the plethora of saguaro rising from the earth and imbuing the drier hillsides with a unique color of life. Also, with the total amount of designated wilderness in the park, I still have many hiking opportunities to return to and pursue.

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Sequoia (CA)

Park Number: 15/59

First Visited: March 5, 2011

Sequoias are the most diligent trees on the planet: no insect penetrates their thick bark; no disease afflicts their immunities; not even lightning ends their existence. They are kings among saplings, the monarchs of the forest. But, although strong and mighty, they are also nurturing. Sequoias bring life to the whole forest—from the tiny clover to the formidable fir. When a Sequoia finally falls, it is not uncommon for multiple other trees to grow out of its corpse and live off the lasting legacy now dissolving back in to the soil.

I try to remember this when looking to my own species. I try to remember this when fostering the communal stories we need in order to rise like future kings and queens from the royalty that reared us.

Kings Canyon (CA)

Park Number: 16/59

First Visited: March 6, 2011

Kings Canyon often gets overlooked, which, I suppose, is a pun, as that is what you do at a canyon, but of the Sierra Nevada national parks, this one gets the least recognition. This is because it abuts Sequoia and they are monitored as one park. And then, over this conglomeration, Yosemite casts its mighty shadow.

Kings is a forgotten California park. An afterthought to a family vacation.

That is what I like about Kings. You get lost there. You feel wild. Forever free to wander the contiguous United States’ second largest expanse of unpaved land. The park, however, as with the entire Sierra range, is facing unprecedented future challenges with the growing threats of climate change, air pollution, and invasive species. It will be interesting to see how the NPS works to resolve these issues as California enters its worst drought in the last one thousand years.

My heart aches for the future, but that is only wasted torment. Now is the time to find meaningful solutions to our anthropogenic catastrophes, to enforce them, and to begin alleviating the environmental stress we've gifted this planet.

Pinnacles (CA)

Park Number: 17/59

First Visited: March 7, 2011

Pinnacles is what a volcano looks like when fault lines tear through it, dragging one half of the mountain 150 miles down the coast. Pinnacles is what reintroducing a nearly extinct bird into the world looks like—the California condor. Pinnacles is what climbing through creek-filled caves feels like, as you shimmy and crawl in the dark, catching glimmers of light spilling through the precariously-balanced boulders above. Pinnacles is what the most recently added national park to the system looks like (January 10, 2013). But words are just a placeholder, just another false vessel—come see the park for yourself.

Shenandoah (VA)

Park Number: 18/59

First Visited: May 6, 2011

I dream of Shenandoah in the fall. Well, that is to say, I dream with a full color palette—eyes closed, brain subdued, nocturnal swirls—and this, I believe, is what the park brings to its visitors. You get to live in a Monet painting.

Shenadoah National Park also kicks off the northern section of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a trail running all the way down to the Smokies. Entering this park and achieving this ridgeline gives east-coast visitors an escape from the municipality of the crowded seaboard. You forget Washington, DC is an hour and a half away. You remember what it means to be alone.

Mammoth Cave (KY)

Park Number: 19/59

First Visited: May 7, 2011

I whisper to Meredith, “This place is unbelievable.” The ranger giving the tour overhears and responds, “Thank you.” It’s an odd thing to say, with Mer and me later joking that the man must get cave-lonely down in his office. That he may have gone a little crazy. I mean, how else could one so easily accept gratitude for Mother Earth. But maybe he has the right to. Maybe we all do.

Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in the world, and yet, it is still not fully explored. Miles of tunnels and tubes are still unaccounted for. And while you are inside the earth you can hear the underground rivers carving away at its creation. This place is not stagnant. It continues growing, ever slowly, in the pitch black of the abyss.

Hot Springs (AR)

Park Number: 20/59

First Visited: May 8, 2011

This is the oddest national park in the entire system. I say this for multiple reasons: it’s the smallest national park in America, it is the only one found in an urban setting, and, more than anything, it is really just a bathhouse of antiquity.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think bathhouses are just as cool as the next guy, but why this place has “national park” status befuddles me. Of the forty-three hot springs in the park, a lot of them are capped off and inaccessible to the public. Also, the most famous of the geysers isn’t even fully natural; it was artificially diverted to be more aesthetically pleasing.

Surprisingly though, Hot Springs was actually the first federally protected “park” in the country in 1832. Hot Springs, however, didn’t become a true national park until 1921. But, nonetheless, this is why Hot Springs was selected to be the first national park quarter released in the series.

I don’t have grievances with this park, it just stands out as the Which-One-of-These-Doesn’t-Belong. The place, I think, would be better suited as a national historic site.

Petrified Forest (AZ)

Park Number: 21/59

First Visited: May 9, 2011

You wouldn’t believe the sheer amount of trees—prostrate in the desert—resting forever solid as stone. It’s as if Medusa herself took family holidays here, showing no mercy as to what she set her vacationing eyes upon. The result: organic turned inanimate, timber turned bedrock.

What’s fun about this park is the layout; the property sits nicely between Interstate 40 and U.S Route 180. Entering Petrified Forest takes you smoothly from one road to the next. It’s also a compact, drive-through park and can be done in a hurry (though not recommended). But in the small acreage is a plethora of absurd geology to behold—one of the largest concentrations of petrified wood in the world. It’s also the windiest place I’ve ever been.

Crater Lake (OR)

Park Number: 22/59

First Visited: May 18, 2011

I’m not much of a lake person—not much of a water person, for that matter—but this caldera has some incredible features: it’s the deepest lake in the country, the seventh deepest lake on the planet, and has the clearest water of all the world. That’s pretty damn cool.

There is a semi-strenuous trail on the north side of the rim that takes you down to the water. It’s worth dipping your feet in. And if you’re really ambitious you can take a boat out to the iconic Wizard Island.

Crater Lake was the fifth national park introduced into the system in 1902. It is the only national park in Oregon.

Olympic (WA)

Park Number: 23/59

First Visited: May 21, 2011

The Olympic Peninsula contains three unique regions of equal prominence. First is the coast, which is sullen and overcast with ocean spray and unescapable mist. This gives a Goonies vibe to the shoreline, as violent waves crash against both cliffs and distant sea stacks. Timber litters the tideline, but this wood is different. It’s old growth—massive strands of cedar and spruce and fir—stolen to the ocean, polished in the tumbler, and kicked back up on the banks for us to walk along like high wires in the circus.

Next is the rainforest, an emerald buried in the heart of the landmass. You wouldn’t believe the shades of green, the hues of life, the abundance of growth and decay. Everything is wet and thriving. You get soaked yourself, almost feeling the mold and moss maturing on your skin, but you don’t care because you’ve become a lost child in the wonderland. The Hoh is one of my favorite places in the entire country.

Lastly, you have the Olympic Mountains tucked away in the northeastern sector. This was the area originally protected under national monument status by Theodore Roosevelt, and it is here that you have the high, alpine settings, the crescent shaped lakes, and the snowpack runoff causing all the replete waterfalls in the area. Oddly enough, these mountains give the eastern peninsula a dry disposition, creating complete juxtaposition to the rainforest.

Badlands (SD)

Park Number: 24/59

First Visited: July 16, 2011

We awoke to a collapsed tent, everything toppled on top of us. This was four in the morning. The hours leading up to this fiasco had not been pleasant either: unexpected Midwest humidity, swarms of unrelenting mosquitos, a looming rainstorm on the horizon.

Instead of trying to salvage our temporary home and reclaim sleep, we just shoved the tent back in the suburban, drove to the top of the badland formations, and watched the theatrics we'd been invited to see.

To our right the sun began to rise, casting gold across an already golden plain; to our left, Zeus sent lightning bolts danced along the landscape, illuminating what was left of the lingering darkness.

It was an awful night. It was one of the best I’ve ever had.

Wind Cave (SD)

Park Number: 25/59

First Visited: July 17, 2011

Despite being the seventh established U.S. national park, and the first cave to be a national park in the world, Wind Cave often gets overshadowed by other landmarks in the region: The Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills. This is unfortunate considering there are many unique and prominent features about this park, including 95% of the world’s discovered boxwork formations and, above ground, the largest mixed grass prairie in the United States.

I’ve found that when visiting multiple caves, they all start to look the same, but Wind Cave is certainly worth a stop, especially if you’re already in the area, because the boxwork structures are truly a sight to see.

Arches (UT)

Park Number: 26/59

First Visited: July 30, 2011

Whether you've never been to Moab or been a thousand times, this region should be near the top of everyone's future destinations list. High desert is healthy for the soul.

Moab is a quaint town with your typical resort amenities: expensive art, independent restaurants, busy coffee shops. The place is full of gear-heads and adventure junkies. This is all for good reason: not but ten minutes to the north is Arches, a compact national park containing awe-inspiring monoliths, slabs, and arches around every bend.

The hiking is great out here (especially in the Fiery Furnace), but it does get scorching hot in the summer and crowds can be a bother (the visitation rate is increasing at 15% per year). But if you can find a time to enjoy temperate weather while avoiding the tourists, it doesn't get much better than Arches.

Canyonlands (UT)

Park Number: 27/59

First Visited: July 30, 2011

Canyonlands is expansive and gives visitors several options on how to experience the park. Island in the Sky is best for observation, rising above surrounding erosion and showing what a planet looks like as it slowly eats away at itself. This is where you will find the ever-famous Mesa Arch.

The Needles region sees fewer visitors as it is more remote. Here you will find petrified palaces dedicated to the omnipotence of time. Hiking the Needles is fun as trails are rigorous and exposed, showing you distant attractions and then guiding you to them. Jeep trails crisscross the terrain and can take you all the way to the Chesler Loop.

The Maze is the most remote of the three areas (excluding the detached Horseshoe Canyon unit) and requires much more dedication to access (including a high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle). I have yet to visit this section but plan to in the near future.

There are so many crevasses to explore in Moab that you could spend the rest of your days covering new ground. But be careful: danger looms and help is sparse (as Aron Rolston found out when he got stuck between a rock and a hard place).

Mesa Verde (CO)

Park Number: 28/59

First Visited: July 31, 2011

Mesa Verde is important in the history of American preservation as it helped instigate the Antiquities Act—a bill which now allows presidents to bypass Congressional approval and preserve land as national monuments.

What happened was that, in the 1890s, a foreign archeologist helped to uncover the ancient ruins of Mesa Verde, and when he went to leave the country with artifacts of antiquity, the United States government had no laws in place to stop him from taking them home to Sweden.

Congressman John Lacey helped spearhead the Antiquities Act, adding to his impressive list of achievements. Theodore Roosevelt was the president when this act came into effect (1906), to which he then began protecting thousands of acres of land under the premise of having “historic and scientific value.”

Capitol Reef (UT)

Park Number: 29/59

First Visited: August 5, 2011

Of the five Utah national parks, Capitol Reef is the most underwhelming. This isn’t to say that it lacks in importance or prominence, it just doesn’t have the upfront, in-your-face monuments the other parks bolster.

What this park has is geological magnitude—a warp in the earth’s crust called the Waterpocket Fold. From a distance you get a perspective on this seventy-five mile monocline formation; from up close it simply looks like a defensive wall. This is one result of tectonic plates colliding.

Like the other parks of Utah this place has domes, slabs, and arches, but what really stands out is the fold. Therefore, if you have topographical or earthly curiosities, Capitol Reef is for you.

Hawai'i Volcanoes (HI)

Park Number: 30/59

First Visited: February 23, 2012

I awoke in a panic, jolting skyward and bashing my forehead against the inside of the trunk. This is what the adventure had come to: a grown man hiding in a car’s storage compartment because he thought it the safest place to be. Checking my face for blood, now I wasn’t so sure.

In the confined space I scrambled for my flashlight and hunting knife. Something was outside the vehicle and hell-bent on entry. Sea-sick surges rocked my shelter like a sailboat caught in rhythmic waves, a violent consistency designed to destroy. Overtaken with fear, I failed to exit the makeshift bed I’d fashioned in the back of my temporary home, a rented Chevrolet Cruze, remaining idle inside the trunk instead.

My mobile fortress came easy. By folding down the car’s backseats, I created a bed which positioned the majority of my body in the trunk—my torso, arms, and head—and the rest exposed in the cab. I draped a towel over the precipice that divided cab and trunk, legs and upper body. It was a quaint space where I could read and also balance my emergency items—a phone, knife, and flashlight—in the metal mechanisms that operated the hatch.

Regardless of where I slept, however, every night was the same: eyes closed, brain subdued, but alert. A paranoid sleeper, I was ready for the worst.

But being ready for trouble and actually reacting to it are two very different things. Therefore, the darkness leached my confidence, as if the loss of light expounded the exact fears it had bred. It was the humans I didn’t trust.

So I sat in three a.m. terror, clutching my recently-located flashlight and knife, too afraid to use either. But then, just as expectantly as the shaking had begun, it ended.

Not giving in to the ruse, I waited. But, with each stabilizing breath, the terror eventually succumbed to confusion and curiosity. I contemplated the situation, the possible endings to this story, and decided to shimmy and squeeze out of the trunk to assess the danger I was in. Illuminating the scene, I was surprised to open the passenger door and find…nothing.

There was nothing near the car, human or otherwise. Nothing. I took hold of my surroundings, remembered where I was, and postulated what had happened: seismic waves, tectonic shifting, the earth alive.

From the trunk of a car I’d just experienced my first earthquake, and it was a potent reminder that I was sleeping next to the world’s most active volcano—I was sleeping in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

Haleakala (HI)

Park Number: 31/59

First Visited: February 27, 2012

I then traveled into the heart of Haleakala, a crater shrouded in clouds and swept barren by the wind. This was the rumored depression where the god Maui captured the sun and hid it inside the earth to lengthen the days, just as I had envisioned when experiencing the Big Island’s glowing caldera. Looking back on the way I came, island mythology started making more sense: the tales of grief-stricken creation, jealous eruptions, understandable thievery. And I took these tales home with me, a weightless luggage, a sojourner’s souvenir, a pilgrim’s payment for navigating the nuances of wayward wandering.

Carlsbad Caverns (NM)

Park Number: 32/59

First Visited: July 4, 2012

Cave systems, to me—after visiting several in succession—tend to become indistinguishable and monotonous. Carlsbad is different though.

Carlsbad has such unique formations—and such a plethora of them too. The Big Room is, simply put, amazing. I mean, you could spend hours circling the loop of this self-guided tour, marveling at the grotesque and beautiful evolution of dripping water. But there are other ranger-led tours as well; I would recommend the King’s Palace.

The unique attractions don’t stop at the formation either. There is a cafeteria built right in the middle of the cave, which is odd in itself, considering the National Park Service’s policy on unnecessary infrastructure, but this thing has been there for decades. The debate over its removal recommences every year.

Another must-see attraction is the bat flight. If you catch this on a good night, you can sit and watch thousands of bats leave the mouth of the cave, swirling and disappearing on the horizon, in a mass exodus for food.

Guadalupe Mountains (TX)

Park Number: 33/59

First Visited: July 4, 2012

It surprised me, the Yellowstone ranger saying his favorite place to hike in the country is Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I guess I never got to the higher elevations, but to me the mountains seemed lackluster—too dry. Also, on my first visit, I was hiking alone, my cohort asleep in the camp, as I progressed up the Devils Hall Trail. I was paranoid: seemed like mountain lion country. On my second journey, I adventured to Smith Spring with my dad and brother. It was nice to have company, to rejoice in the life-giving water of the spring. And the Texas madrone trees—there’s nothing like them.

What the park preserves, however, is more nuanced. And amazing. Much of the mountains you’re looking at—the highest peaks in Texas—are ancient reef. This area was once underwater and you can see the remnants in the rock: fossilized sea life.

Unfortunately for Guadalupe Mountains, it’s sandwiched between the more charismatic parks of Carlsbad Caverns and Bid Bend. It’s often overlooked and ignored. But it needs attention. It needs time for the trails. I need to get back and give it the diligence it deserves.

Great Basin (NV)

Park Number: 34/59

First Visited: August 2, 2012

Traveling Interstate 15, you see the signs repeated every couple hundred miles: “Great Basin National Park.” Yet, despite this, the place is unknown, one of the least visited parks in the system (about 115 thousand people a year). It resides in a mysterious state, often slated for the sins of sin city, or simply relegated to uncharismatic desert. But Great Basin is as diverse as Las Vegas itself: take a tour of the Lehman Caves, observe some of the darkest skies in the country, pick apples outside the visitor center, hike to the over-13,000-foot Wheeler Peak, or, my favorite, sit with the ancient bristlecone pines.

Bristlecones are the oldest living trees on the planet, some almost 5,000 years old, and the longevity is apparent, having twisted and gnarled to the wear of the elements: cold temperatures, high elevation, short growing seasons, intense winds. They look dead. But it is this very death-like resilience that ensures their survival, generating dense wood that is resistant to fungi, rot, and erosion. Sitting with these organic anomalies, you can’t help but think of the significance of their presence, having lived the entirety of humanity’s recorded history. Place your hands on the bark. You’ll feel it.

Lassen Volcanic (CA)

Park Number: 35/59

First Visited: August 3, 2012

I first tried to visit Lassen, a lesser known of the California parks, when it was still socked in by lingering Cascade Mountain snow, Lassen Peak (at 10,457 ft.) being the southern-most volcano in this range. I stood at the park entrance, then denied the glories of the national park in spring, with road closure signs mocking me back to the interstate and furthering my trip north, to Crater Lake.

Over a year later, I returned, this time with the benedictions of August, wildflowers greeting me and Stellar’s jays inviting my father to add their visage to his birdwatching collection. Water boiled from the earth at Sulphur Works and then further yet at Bumpass Hell, a boardwalk showing me colors often unknown to landlocked mountains: the tamarack of trees but in stone, the greens of good copper gone bad, the turquois of exotic ocean islands. Evergreens stood witness to my evolving state of awe.

Geothermal activity may be the most astonishing part of the park, but always, from a distance, is dormant Lassen Peak, the largest plug dome volcano in the world. It oversees its eponymous place of protection, a park containing every type of volcano on the planet: plug dome, shield, cinder cone, and strato. This rarity alone deserves its national park designation and, also, your consideration for a visit.

Cuyahoga Valley (OH)

Park Number: 36/59

First Visited: December 30, 2012

The Cuyahoga Valley is an elongated strip of federal property, located amidst the urban centers of Cleveland and Akron, that offers Midwesterners alternating experiences of native plants, protected wildlife, a history of canal culture, and myriad recreational opportunities. I’ve only been to this park during the height of winter, which greatly reduced accessibility to a lot of these opportunities, but I still came to understand the inherent tranquility of the place: the meandering river pockmarked with locks and surrounding waterfalls; the charm of preserved farmsteads and railway yesterdays; biking paths and ski trails. That said, I’m not sure this property necessarily needed the upgrade from a national recreation area (designated in 1974) to a full national park (designated in 2000). The place pales in comparison to other more famous parks, seeming almost gimmicky at times with its excess infrastructure and tourist accommodations (such is a result of Eastern parks enduring higher populations earlier in American history and before accumulating protective regulations). I’d like to make a few trips back to this area, during varied seasons, to get a more holistic understanding of its quality.

Congaree (SC)

Park Number: 37/59

First Visited: April 23, 2013

When I read about Congaree I have to chuckle: the park lays claim to some weird, long-winded accolades: The largest tract of old growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States, or One of the highest temperate deciduous forest canopies remaining in the world. Without knowing this, however, you still understand the one-of-a-kind nature of the place upon visitation: the floodplains reflecting deciduous greens of plentiful hues; the ghoulish-growths of bald cypress knees stemming out of the water; and the Eastern cottonmouth snakes, pileated woodpeckers, and white-tailed deer navigating the terrain. It’s a wild ecosystem unique to the region, mostly inaccessible to the lay visitor—a 2.4-mile boardwalk loop the extent of most people’s adventure. I like this though, the impassable landscape more attuned to a kayak or canoe or simply the imagination, because it makes the place feel genuine—a park not for the enjoyment of the people (especially with the swarms of mosquitos) but a park left to challenge the people.

Grand Canyon (AZ)

Park Number: 38/59

First Visited: June 22, 2013

The warning signs are everywhere: don’t attempt hiking to the base of the canyon and back up in one day. The primary concern of such admonishments is the heat: people often forget the temperature difference between base and rim can vary by thirty degrees Fahrenheit. But we went anyway. We went with one reassuring advantage in our favor: we were hiking at night, using only the vibrant light of the circling supermoon. It was a dream trip, just me and two best friends starting on the South Rim and weaving down the Bright Angel Trail.

Getting into the canyon, to my mind, is much better than sharing the rim with the ogling tourists all enjoying the posh amenities of the overdeveloped infrastructure. The rim offers wonder, but the inner canyon holds adventure.

We were on an adventure, seeing few others on our nine-hour journey, down and up, four-and-a-half-thousand vertical feet each way, dipping our blistered feet in that iconic river at the halfway point. It was at the river, however, that worry set in: Chad was puking and I wasn’t sure we were going to make it out—after all, going down is the easy part. Now we had to hike out. We went slowly and cautiously, the puking periodic, completing the near-sixteen-mile hike at three in the morning. We were miserable, but it’s one of my favorite memories in the parks.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison (CO)

Park Number: 39/59

First Visited: August 13, 2013

The United States boasts the grandeur of many of its canyons, with the Grand being the most acclaimed and Kings the most regal, but the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, though lesser known, holds equal weight across the landscape. It is deep and narrow, sending one into a vertigo trip while staring down its striated walls that alternate between shadowy blacks and gneiss creams. The ominous namesake of the park comes from the fact that there are parts of the canyon that only receive about thirty-five minutes of light a day. The thing is sheer. And like all other canyons, you can enjoy this park’s beauty from above, standing on the rim and admiring the depth, or you can trek below, to the Gunnison River responsible for carving out the eminent gorge. My favorite part about the park, however, as with all other underrated federal property, is the isolation. You can be alone out here. And bask in the lonesome awe.

North Cascades (WA)

Park Number: 40/59

First Visited: August 31, 2013

Though Glacier National Park holds the namesake of perennial ice, North Cascades National Park contains the actuality (with over three hundred glaciers compared to the former’s twenty-five). These vast icefields continue to shape and maintain the geology and ecology of the region, offering fauna, like endangered wolverines, places to den, or acres of old-growth forest protection from harvest. Climate change is taking its toll, however, and North Cascades now operates as a scientific research center, along with the other Washington parks, for potential solutions of adaptation and mitigation.

North Cascades is a lesser-known park within the system, although it gets roughly one million visitors a year, which isn’t entirely surprising considering its proximity to Seattle. Its low-profile identity resides in its backcountry/wilderness majority; access is limited making it a haven for backpackers and mountain climbers. I look forward to my own future endeavors in the park, each taking me deeper and higher into the frozen terrain.

Mount Rainier (WA)

Park Number: 41/59

First Visited: September 1, 2013

Rainier, a monolith to the Cascade Range, holds domain over the Washington skyline, the drama never diminishing: when the weather allows, it’s okay to stare. Adding to the pizzazz, this 14,411-foot mountain is also one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes (listed as a Decade Volcano). But with the danger comes beauty: harboring twenty-six major glaciers, this summit has been called “the mother of waters,” feeding the valleys below and allowing for some of the best wildflower meadows in the country. I look forward to a lifetime of return trips.

National Park of American Samoa

Park Number: 42/59

First Visited: March 10, 2014

There are places still invisible to modern cartography, though they show on our maps and within a shared knowledge of existence. Underserved communities, maybe. Countries deemed financially unworthy of attention. Entire island chains lost at sea.

This, of course, becomes apparent when you are a resident afflicted by such neglect…or a traveler looking to find the missing. I would know little of American Samoa, let alone independent Samoa, had my government and military not chosen to utilize the land for its deep harbor, labeling it a “protectorate,” or, as it might otherwise read, a “lesser-than” America. I know it for the national park.

This is the only national park we lease from native villages, the only national park south of the equator, and one of the few in a tropical location. We call it America. Yet, few Americans know about it.

The culture is Polynesian, much like that of their Hawaiian brethren. The main island, Tutuila, is roughly twenty-one miles across and three miles wide—a tiny area when compared to the breadth of the contiguous United States. The acreage is dense, trees fighting to grow and survive, yet the people are peaceful, working in harmony.

I spend my days hiking, something that confounds the locals—Why exercise for pleasure? they ask. Exercise, for the most part, is their agricultural occupation. I spend my nights at Tisa’s Barefoot Bar, a hostel where I make friends, two Australians of Sri Lankan decent. Flying foxes, or fruit bats, own the sky, pollinating the robust and ubiquitous cropland. The seashore is a place all its own; I do not explore its bounty. I am a mountain person, and, as such, I make it to the highest point, Mt. Alva, and gaze across all of Pago Pago. This place is unforgettable, though, as I’ve said, American Samoa remains invisible to most of the country which claims it.

Big Bend (TX)

Park Number: 43/59

First Visited: June 7, 2014

When I first set the goal of visiting all the U.S. national parks I never thought Big Bend was going to be one of my favorites. Upon visitation, however, I realized this is one the most underrated parks in the system.

Coming through the Persimmon Gap entrance, I first made my way south and then west. This put me in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert, one of Big Bend's three main ecosystems. I took Old Maverick Road and then looped back on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. Stunning views were replete and seemingly endless.

The Santa Elena Canyon, with cliffs up to 1,500 feet, dwarfed me. From its mouth flows the Rio Grande, the careening river creating the bend for which the park is named. This river also brings contrast to the desert via a riparian ecosystem and acts as an international border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Big Bend is one of the very few U.S. national parks that shares an international border and it is this thin, murky segment of the Rio Grande that sets the delineation. Across the water you will find Boquillas del Carmen, a quaint Mexican town existing via tourism from Big Bend. This village essentially became a ghost town between 2003 and 2013 while the border crossing was closed but it is now once again thriving. This is the only Mexican border crossing that requires U.S. citizens to get their passports stamped—when I asked a park ranger about the reasoning they told me that they too were unsure why.

Balanced Rock is another must-see icon of the park. To get there, head 6 miles down Grapevine Hills Road and then hike the 2.2 mile (round trip) trail of the same name.

While going on these adventures, keep in mind Big Bend is a bird watcher's paradise—an ideal migration route with favorable temperatures year round. You can see myriad unique birds, such as the common black hawk (though the name is misleading): this hawk can only be found in the United States during breeding season in small pockets of the Southwest. You'll spot them around water sources in the park.

Lastly, watching the sunset through the Window is a Big Bend rite of passage—you have to do it at least once. Located in the Chisos Mountains, this view adds ambiance to a range that already acts as an ecological oasis; so much diversity exists at this elevation (7,825 feet at its highest) that you'll forget you spent the day below in the desert.

Theodore Roosevelt (ND)

Park Number: 44/59

First Visited: March 12, 2015

Of all the national parks, this is the only one in which I’ve seen a fence line. A property boundary. Oil wells on one side (pumpjacks and on-site flaring), a trailhead on the other. That’s become the story out here, oil. This region had to have been so peaceful before the Bakken boom, a relatively unknown badlands region of North Dakota. But now? Thousands flood the area looking to benefit from the earth’s sweet black honey. Industrial trucks crowd the roads, highway fatalities increasing. Man-camps cover barren ground, as if make-shift military outposts. Dust, everywhere. And this land is for sale, mineral rights for grabs, just attend a BLM auction as evidence. But once, I'm sure, so peaceful.

Teddy came here, in 1884, for the solitude, after his wife and mother died on the same Valentine’s Day. He wanted a landscape to match the desolation of his heart. The light has gone out of my life, he wrote. But, as the trope goes, nature healed his wounds. He became a Westerner. Then our twenty-sixth president and a champion of land management. There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country, he'd write. I wonder, though, what would he would think of his namesake park now.

Dry Tortugas (FL)

Park Number: 45/59

First Visited: May 21, 2015

Most national parks showcase wilderness landscapes and monumental scenery that become the main attractions to the majority of visitors and tourists each year, such as Yellowstone’s geothermal activity or Yosemite’s granite domes. There are a couple of parks, however, that were established to protect cultural heritage and historical artifacts, such as Hot Springs in Arkansas or the hanging cliffs in Mesa Verde. What is so unique about this park is that its appeal is an equal balance of both: pristine oceanic ecology and nineteenth-century American antiquity.

Dry Tortugas National Park is a series of seven islands about seventy miles off the coast of Key West, Florida. The largest of the islands, Garden Key, was designated to be a fortification in 1846 by the United States as a means of controlling navigation in and out of the Gulf; construction of Fort Jefferson went on for thirty years, utilizing sixteen million bricks, but was never fully finished. The fort was also used as a prison during the Civil War by the Union for captured deserters.

When you visit the park today you can make day trips out to Garden Key via boat or plane. You can then spend the morning and afternoon exploring the hexagonal fort (now in a state of minor disrepair as nature is slowly reclaiming the isle), walking around the moat, birdwatching, and snorkeling. Camping is also an option but is very limited (reservations need to be made long in advance).

This place is a cultural anomaly that most Americans don’t even know exists. Despite this, it is one of the more fascinating places I’ve been. I can’t wait to return (to camp this time) and would encourage anyone to go who has the opportunity.

Biscayne (FL)

Park Number: 46/59

First Visited: May 22, 2015

Sometimes, unfortunately, when visiting a park, there are limiting circumstances that are out of your control. For example: I’ve been told Biscayne is an incredible place to visit, with vibrant coral systems and enchanting sea life, but this all, of course, requires aquatic access. When planning my time at Biscayne, however, I learned they had a dispute with their concession company, meaning, until the matter was resolved, there would be no boat tours, kayak or canoe rentals, or trips out to the keys.

When I got to the park I was limited to the visitor’s center and a short coastal walk; everything remarkable about the area was inaccessible to me. What I did see was the Miami cityscape to the north, a factory spewing air pollution to the south, and a dirty diaper littering the side of the trail.

In regards to experience, this is the most disappointing park I’ve been to thus far. Hopefully a future revisit will change that.

Everglades (FL)

Park Number: 47/59

First Visited: May 22, 2015

Everglades is one of my favorite parks in the entire system, not only because of what it contains, but because of what it represents. In 1934 this park became the first section of land to be set aside and protected for the sole purpose of environmental preservation—there was no monumental scenery to utilize for tourism, no mountains to traverse, no larger-than-life biomass to baffle visitors. Most just saw the swamp as an endless sea of grass.

But what it did have, and still does, was a glimpse into the NPS system’s future: a delicate ecosystem filled with unique flora and fauna highly susceptible to the threat of humanity’s developmental recklessness. This transgressed by means of poaching, water pollution, invasive species, water usage (specifically filtering down from Lake Okeechobee, which, amazingly takes about a year to flow from the lake to the estuaries of the Everglades), and rising water levels (the highest natural point in southern Florida is eight feet above sea level).

This was also the first time the government recognized the necessity of greater ecosystems as well, protecting Big Cypress National Preserve as an extension of the Everglades. Without these parks, I believe, we wouldn’t have seen the essential environmental protection policies that then developed over the subsequent decades.

The area is still threatened, now more than ever, but continues standing as the symbol of hope for which it was originally established.

Kenai Fjords (AK)

Park Number: 48/59

First Visited: August 23, 2015

Of the Alaskan national parks, Kenai Fjords is the most accessible. Just 130 miles south of Anchorage, this park invites visitors of all dispositions: boat tours for the more observational, sea kayaking for the more adventurous, glacial hiking for the more masochistic.

The town of Seward sits at the center of it all, offering a quaint location as a home base. It is here that you can enjoy espresso from a café converted church, grab a beer with other vagrant wanderers, or tent camp for an easy $10 (if you can snag a first-come, first-serve campsite in the national park it’s free and infinitely more scenic).

Choosing the way of the ocean you will witness glaciers, like frozen cliff-side avalanches, creeping down to the Gulf of Alaska and calving baby icebergs. You’ll also most likely see variations of the park’s myriad whales, puffins, Steller sea lions, harbor seals, and jellyfish.

If you go the way of land, checking out the Exit Glacier or, further yet, the Harding Icefield, you’ll see a different array of fauna: black bears and Dall sheep. Hiking to the Harding Icefield was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done as it was the most strenuous hike I’ve been on (in terms of unrelenting elevation gain) coupled with a surreal payoff—a view at the endless expanse of terrain where Kenai Peninsula glaciers are born.

Wrangell-St. Elias (AK)

Park Number: 49/59

First Visited: August 26, 2015

Wrangell-St. Elias is the biggest national park in the entire system: 13.2 million acres (six times larger than Yellowstone). But, like most Alaskan parks, this one is remote and those acres are hard to come by; experiencing them is a matter of earning them.

You can access Wrangell via a flight into Anchorage followed by a four-and-a-half-hour drive. What comes next, though, after reaching the town of Chitina, is another sixty miles on a malicious dirt road to the town of McCarthy (this stint will take another three hours, but don’t worry, there are espresso shacks along the way). This journey is well worth the hardship, however, because McCarthy is where the dark weirdos live—vagrants getting off the grid and back to a minimalist mindset. It is here that you can get a killer meal at the Roadside Potatohead Café and a regional education at the well-kempt museum.

Up the road is the old Kennecott Mine, one of the most successful copper mines in history. The National Park Service, operating with local organizations, has been working diligently to maintain and repair the original infrastructure of this area and has great placards and didactics explaining the significance of each building (of which you can walk around and explore). Myriad hikes branch out from this area, taking you to both glaciers and mineshafts.

There is another road into the park further north (called Nabesna) that will also lead you through the mining legacy of the area. I’ve been told this road is even more rugged and susceptible to flooding than McCarthy; bring spare tires if attempting this trek.

Beyond these two roads the only way to see this park is via hiking, prop planes, and river rafting. What’s rad is that camping is pretty much allowed anywhere and pull-offs along the two roads make this process even easier. Mount Saint Elias is also in this park, the second highest peak in the United States (at 18,009 feet).

Denali (AK)

Park Number: 50/59

First Visited: August 28, 2015

When people consider Alaska’s national parks, though there are eight in total, they think of one in particular: Denali. This isn’t without reason: Denali was one of the first national parks introduced in to the system, being established as Mount McKinley National Park in 1917. The two biggest draws are the mountains (one being the tallest peak in all of North America) and the abundance of wildlife, ranging from grizzly bears to caribou to Dall sheep (my favorite was a beaver dragging a freshly-gnawed branch across the road).

As for North America’s highest summit, standing at a staggering 20,310 feet, the mountain isn’t without controversy. It all has to do with titles.

One of the first recognized place names was Denali, an Athabaskan word meaning “the high one.” However, when the national park was designated, the United States renamed the mountain Mount McKinley, honoring a president who had never even stepped foot in Alaska. The park was later renamed in 1980 as Denali National Park, but the actual summit remained McKinley. It wasn’t until August 30, 2015 (the weekend that I was in the park) that the mountain’s name was restored to Denali.

Nearly 400,000 people visit Denali each year to see the mountain, but, unfortunately, only 30% are given such an opportunity; the summit is often shrouded in clouds. I got to see the peak from afar (from Denali State Park) but when trying to make the 85-mile journey to Wonder Lake, one of the best places to feel the mountain’s magnitude, we got turned around at mile 53 (at Toklat River) because we’d caught the first snowstorm of the impending winter.

This, however, gives me reason to return.

As for the park itself, there are a couple of things that Denali is truly doing right. One is that, in order to enter the park’s interior, you have to use the designated bus system. This cuts down on park traffic, wildlife disruption, pollution/emissions, and infrastructure erosion. Other parks need to start adopting this system; it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even visit Yellowstone in the summer because of the chaotic traffic and parking conditions.

Secondly, I love that Denali adheres to a true wilderness system of exploration, meaning there are few established trails and the rangers actually encourage you to blaze your own routes, bushwhacking through the thick taiga and hopping along riverbeds. This is what I liked best about Alaska in general—the hands-off approach of trusting visitors to respect the land and utilize it without unnecessary fees and regulations.

This is all to say: Alaska is the fading vestige of a frontier long-since lifeless in the Lower Forty-Eight; I’d advise going before it’s gone.

Acadia (ME)

Park Number: 51/59

First Visited: June 10, 2016

The waitress tells me it’s the most visited national park in the country. And, instantly, I know I’m an asshole. I read it on her face. I feel it on my own. I’m scoffing. Arrogant. Because I know too much about this shit. Acadia is the ninth most visited park in the system at two and half million visitors a year—seven and a half million less than the actual most visited (the Smokies).

She tells me, despite being seasonal help year after year, that she made her first voyage into the park last week. We are maybe, at most, five miles from the entrance. She is surprised I’ve come all this way just for the park. I look down at my REI “National Park Centennial” shirt—I haven’t changed my clothes in days. I do not tell her I’ve suffered through much worse for the parks.

Other encounters with locals mirror the same sentiment: There’s an iconic lighthouse out here? I didn’t know that. And, I really just come here to drink in Bar Harbor.This type of naïveté isn’t unique to Mount Desert Island. I find misconstrued ideas about the parks everywhere (when in American Samoa the locals kept telling me they had never been to the park because it was too expensive...and the park is free).

Therefore, when entering Acadia, I feel better equipped than most, despite having done little research for the trip. In fact, this is the least prepared I’ve ever been (I’m hiking in flip flops and everyperson I pass comments). But here’s the truth: I’m losing interest in the goal I set almost exactly six years ago: to visit every U.S. national park. I’m almost there—eight left. But monumentalism is beginning to feel trite, and cheap, and hack. Steinbeck said it first: Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland. And I’m starting to believe it with the way people are getting gored by bison, or run over by cars while trying to photograph bald eagles, or turning to human soup after falling into geysers.

What’s been exciting me lately is the nuance: the whorl of sepals, petals, leaves, stipules, branches; the taste of fir buds on my tongue; cinquefoil, buttercup, milkweed, the columbine in my mother’s garden. Nature will always demand our attention, but not through an Instagram filter. We need dirt under our nails.

I’m depressed. And it’s not a favorable lens to see Acadia through. I’m alone. I’m thinking of the symbolism in a dead fox near the park entrance, the result of Ed Abbey’s “industrial tourism.” I’m hiking through a gorge to get to Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the coastal Eastern seaboard: 1,528 feet. It doesn’t take long. Or much energy. But I’m on the move and processing a previous week at a writing conference. Things need to change in my life and for the first time in a long time I’m thinking about abandoning Montana for an urban city center. I need a different kind of wild. I need a break from living stress free.

Wind chills me at the summit and I know this is the beginning of somethingnew, probably a goodbye. I think back to my Buddhist studies, of how we are ushered across life in vessels, like boats on a pond, and how, when reaching a new shore, we must abandon that boat. We can’t take it with us. And it was the Buddha saying this of Buddhism—what a beautiful command for a religious icon to give: relinquish my teachings once they’ve served their purpose. Don’t cling. Don’t be complacent.

I bow to you, untamed places of my salvation. You saved my life. And I offer you an Aloha, as I was taught in Hawaii: it was an honor to share breath with you. But it’s become too easy, or redundant, defending the wild in wild places. I need to re-learn to love you, but this time from afar.

Voyageurs (MN)

Park Number: 52/59

First Visited: August 18, 2016

Voyageursis French for “travelers.” Or so the brochure tells me. Seems adequate: my dad, younger brother, and I have traveled over a thousand miles to be here, not unlike the trappers and traders that once navigated this network of water linking Montreal to western Canada. Okay…the two are very different: birchbark canoes hold little comparison to the modern comforts of industrial tourism. Air conditioning dissipates the humidity. A roof stops the rain. And bug spray helps, however minutely, with the mosquitoes.

But part of the preservation of this park, starting in 1975, is in honor of the voyageurs and Native Americans that endured all this hardship (not to mention the winters). The park is also preserved for its natural beauty, the lakes and boreal forest, the exposed bedrock—some of the oldest on the planet at 2.8 billion years.

Voyageurs is one of the few water-centric parks in the system, and not being a water person, I didn’t explore its faculties to the fullest; renting a canoe or kayak would do you well. I did take a boat tour to the Kettle Falls Historic District, something offering range-led lectures, bald eagle sightings, and dinner at the historic hotel.

One of the oddest parts of our visit was a brief late-night trip into Canada, from International Falls into Fort Frances, for Tim Horton’s donuts. The border crossing was within a massive paper factory, which charged seven dollars to cross despite looking like a war zone: blockades, industrial machinery, driving on railway. But we got the donuts. And poutine to boot.

Isle Royale (MI)

Park Number: 53/59

First Visited: August 20, 2016

For being my fifty-third park, I feel a damn fool. A tourist. We’ve brought too much, fine for car camping, but we are loading bag after bag onto this boat. I call it our "shame tour," Isle Royale National Park, a shelter amidst Lake Superior.

The Ojibwa word is “Minong,” translated “a good place for berries.” I agree. Raspberries in my pancakes. Blueberries too. Thimbleberries every patch I pass, which is often. There’s a chart in the visitor center, crude drawings for identification, emojis letting you know what each fruit will do to your face: smile, dizzy, sad. Do not eat the sad fruit. This is baneberry—red or white—bluebeard lily, sarsaparilla. Foxes eat the latter, you find it in their scat, and I find a fox in my camp when I wake to piss. We stare, and it moves closer, investigates, runs. I wait up, in vain, another half hour for a return. Moose come too, less coy, in the Washington Creek to feed. Everyone is moose crazy out here and it’s the precursor to any conversation:Seen one yet? I don’t care. I’m here for the berries. And every time I go picking I get the opposite of excitement:Too much work for me. That’s fine. More for me. More for the foxes.